February 20, 2006

Johns Hopkins APL Gets $30.4M for Advanced Prosthetics Project

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL),
Laurel, Maryland, was awarded a $30.4 million contract to begin the
first phase of Revolutionizing Prosthetics 2009, a four-year
program to develop a next-generation mechanical prosthetic arm.

The contract was awarded under the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) Revolutionizing Prosthetics Program, an
effort to provide the most advanced medical and rehabilitative
technologies for military personnel injured in the line of duty.
APL said that Stuart D. Harshbarger, along with a core group of
engineers, scientists, and medical professionals from APL, the
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the Whiting School of
Engineering, and the Bloomberg School of Public Health, will lead
an interdisciplinary team of government agencies, universities and
private firms to implement DARPA' s vision.

The APL-led team's research will focus on advanced neural
control strategies that will allow the user to operate the arm in a
near-biological manner; that is, to feel and manipulate objects as
a person would with a real hand. They also aim to develop new
power, actuation, and control technologies, as well as advanced
sensors. "The resulting prosthetic system will provide a
significantly improved quality of lifeover a range of daily living
and job functions, including the dexterous manipulation of
objects," Harshbarger says.

"Our challenge is to advance the base of scientific
understanding related to neural control mechanisms and
physiological function of the human limb, while at the same time
developing innovative engineering solutions that can be
successfully implemented," he adds. "DARPA wants this technology
ready for clinical trials in only four years, so there is no time
for us to recreate the wheel. We have handpicked a team that has
decades of experience in prosthetics, but more importantly has made
recent advances that are ready to be realized.